Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Guest Post: A Silver Lining in the Juvenile Justice System

By Robert Valencia

The string of shootings in Newtown, Aurora, and Oak Creek
last year would make some reconsider establishing ‘stop-and-frisk’ policies in
several violence-ridden U.S. cities. Most recently, an
article by The Chicago Tribune’s
Stephanie D. Neely on March 1, claimed that stop-and-frisk policies are needed
in an attempt to curb gun violence in Chicago. According to Neely, 2,600
shooting incidents were reported to the Chicago Police Department, of which 400
resulted in homicide. In the wake of rampant violence, Neely claimed that:

“It's time for Chicago to be
proactive and courageous. New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Pittsburgh and Kansas
City have all had success cutting their rates of gun crime with a strategy
called ‘stop-and-frisk.’ The idea is to target high gun-crime areas with
increased patrols that specifically look for illegal guns. Police officers who
are suspicious of a person are allowed to detain the person and lightly run
their hands over the suspect's outer clothing to determine if the person is
carrying a concealed weapon.”

Neely went on to say:

“This is a plague on our city that
requires a bold solution. Increased fines and longer prison sentences have
never been much of a deterrent. These young men carrying illegal guns are bent
on revenge with little thought to the consequences of their mayhem. Gun
buybacks and other strategies recovered more than 70,000 guns in Chicago over
the last five years, and yet our homicide total last year was higher than that
of New York and Los Angeles, according to crime data.”

Neely’s conclusion proposes that
stop-and-frisk is the only viable strategy “not because I like it or don't
recognize the larger social problems at play, but because we must solve this
problem now and I have seen no other solution that works. The price of doing
nothing is more dead young people.” Research shows that, unfortunately, the
implementation of stop-and-frisk doesn’t help reduce crime or save lives.
Instead, it leads to the racial profiling and criminalization of Latino and Black
individuals -- particularly the youth. According to the New
York Civil Liberties Union, stop-and-frisk policies have led to illegal
stops, the violation of privacy rights, and racial profiling. Nearly nine out of
10 stopped-and-frisked New York residents are innocent, according to New York
Police Department accounts.

There are other, existing, evidence-based solutions that
can stem gun violence without criminalizing the innocent and contributing
further to the mass incarceration of Latino and Black communities. These
programs address the underlying issues causing young people to make poor life
choices and become involved in illicit activity in a way that stop-and-frisk
policies don’t and can’t. In 2007, Connecticut ended the punishment of 16 and
17-years-olds as adults, turning a once punitive and often abusive juvenile
system into a more humane and cost-effective apparatus according to a recently
released study. Among Connecticut’s juvenile system achievements include the
use of pre-trial detention centers and correctional training schools;
community-based supervision and treatment programs for at-risk youth; and
family-focused adolescent treatment, to name a few. The outcome of these
judicial changes led to a reduction of juvenile’s population in Connecticut’s
adult prisons from 403 in 2007 to 151 in mid-2012, as well as to an increase in
adolescent treatment programs from $300,000 in 2000 to $39 million in 2009.

Furthermore, four states are
following in Connecticut’s footsteps, according to a new report by the Justice Policy Institute. In addition to
Connecticut, states such as Arizona, Minnesota, Louisiana, and Tennessee have
reduced youth confinement by more than 50 percent between 2001 and 2010. The
same report advises that other states should consider Connecticut’s model, in
addition to other policymaking recommendations: (1) Recognize opportunities to
push change; (2) settle litigation; (3) create and revamp current juvenile
justice commissions; and (4) use experts for technical assistance.

Of course, these initiatives only refer to youth who are already in the system; however, promoting the treatment of at-risk youth by way of community-based programs, as well as therapeutic interventions rather than harsh punishment will curb incarceration. Moreover, the national discourse over gun control should also propel the conversation on stop-and-frisk policies and racial profiling.

For Neely, desperate times call for
desperate measures. But justice implementation should not be done hastily and
without considering the policy’s effect in the long and short terms, especially
when other alternatives exist to reduce violence and mass incarceration at no additional
cost to taxpayers and without compromising the dignity of innocent youth.

To sum it up, two wrongs just don’t
make a right.

Robert Valencia is a
Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.